“It happened a month ago,” he said, “and this is just one example out of many, over the years. I was heading home of an evening and was hailed unexpectedly by Lopez— another friend. He asked me in for chess, and we sipped wine and smoked Havanas and played chess until we were too drunk to remember what colors we were. Lopez is so black he’s blue in Mera, so that took some doing.” The noise was growing, and he was raising his voice over it.
“I staggered home at last, crawled upstairs, and found Killer— asleep.” Even dim firelight was bright enough to show his blushes.
“So I went downstairs and read a book for a while. I think I was holding it upside down, but it didn’t matter. There were two glasses and an empty wine bottle there. In a little while Killer came down and said he’d better be going.”
“What did you say?” The multitude outside roared enormously, and Jerry turned and stared bleakly at the windows. Then the racket died away again. “I said I was glad he’d been able to come… and I hoped he’d had as memorable an evening as I had.” She gripped his hand suddenly. “You’re a good friend to Killer, Jerry. Better, I suspect, than he deserves.”
“No!” he said and was drowned out again. If demons made the same amount of noise as people, there must be thousands of them out there.
Then a sudden, heart-stopping silence, and Jerry spoke as though nothing had happened. “At times he’s just a little SOB, Ariadne, but he’s also the most faithful, trustworthy friend a man could have. Mera needs him; that’s why I wondered about Thermopylae. A Greek’s loyalty was always first to his city, his polis…
Killer has transferred his loyalty from Thespiae to Mera.” Shout… shout… shout…
SHOUT… What was that? It sounded like a word.
“Here it comes,” Jerry muttered. “I mustn’t say it, but you can probably make out the name. They’re hailing the champion, the big banana himself.” Ast… something? Aster?
“Who?” she whispered.
“He has the Mera desk in hell,” Jerry said grimly. Then the racket rose to a greater cheer than any they had heard yet, that went on and on… and stopped in a sudden, expectant hush. Jerry picked up one of the guns.
“But there’s one disadvantage,” he remarked, continuing the conversation as though nothing had happened. “You can never be quite sure. I’ve always refused Killer’s entreaties. I just can’t swim in those waters and in Mera I don’t have to. That night he had heard me accept— there have been other times, I’m sure. But he doesn’t dare ask. He never knows which is me and which is the god Eros in my shape, and, if he asked, I might deny it all.”
“But here…”
“But here,” he finished the thought, “here Outside, it has to be Jerry. So tonight he asked. And I lied.” Then he muttered, “And tonight I gave him a promise. That’s another first.” There had been no need for him to tell her that. And if what he had been saying was true, then there would be no need for him to honor that promise when he returned to Mera, except that of course Jerry Howard would always honor a promise. If he returned to Mera.
The stove crackled loudly, and she jumped, her nerves rapidly reaching breaking point again— she had thought they’d snapped long ago. The light patches marking the windows seemed to sway.
“What the hell now?” Jerry muttered, studying them. A deep creaking echoed from the yard, then silence.
More creaking sounded, then louder… The light moved on the window patches.
“Oh, this is bloody ridiculous,” Jerry muttered. “It’s all a big fake for our benefit. There aren’t thousands of demons out there. Just one big evil.”
“Maybe they have elections in hell?” she suggested. “And this is part of the pizzazz?” The creaking grew to a splintering screech and she half expected someone to call out, “Timberrrrrrrr!”
A thunderous crash and darkness beyond the drapes. Wild cheering… “That light,” she said weakly. “It was on a telephone pole. I saw it… it was a foot thick! More than a foot.” And whatever was out there had just snapped the pole.
She picked up the other automatic weapon, her hands trembling so much that she was not sure she would be able to fire it.
Then something struck the corner of the cottage with a blow that shook the whole building.
“It’s him,” said Jerry in a very hoarse voice, as though his mouth were bone dry. “No doubt about it.”
“Who?” she shouted.
He hesitated and then shrugged. “Asterios.”
A bellow of triumph, a great, animal roaring rolled through the cottage like a tidal wave…
“What is it?” she whispered. “What does it look like?”
“Hard to tell… can be almost anything… to the Greeks he was ...” His voice was lost in another crash, halfway along the wall, and she heard planks splinter.
“He’s kicking tires,” she whispered.
A third blow came, heavier yet, and the cottage rocked, dishes rattled, and logs fell off the firewood pile and rolled on the floor… then silence.
“It’s behind the cottage,” she said, thinking of those back windows and Alan and Lacey.
“There’s no use.” His voice was barely audible. “If it’s what I think, then it’s bulletproof. We need that antitank gun I mentioned, and even that…”
“Can’t you shoot its eyes out, or something?” He shook his head sadly. “It would hunt by smell or just by demon senses.”
“What about the wand?” she demanded, shocked at the way Jerry seemed to be deliquescing.
“The wand would burn it like a hot poker, but not really damage it. And if we take the wand, Killer dies.”
“He’ll die anyway,” she said. Lacey? Alan?
“It wouldn’t help,” Jerry sighed. “With the wand and a fast horse, you might escape back to Mera… It’s been done. But it would have to be a very fast horse.” The building rocked. Wood squeaked and then splintered and shattered. Graham started screaming. Something was tearing its way in through the back wall. Again came that rending noise, as if half the wall had been ripped out, and the tinkling of glass.
“There must be something!” she moaned, staring at the closed door in front of her, dim in the glimmer of firelight. Jerry, beside her, was mumbling incoherently.
Graham’s screaming grew louder and another voice, Carlo’s, joined in. Jerry stood up. “All I can think of— ” he said. “I’ll stand alongside the door and when it comes in this room I’ll jam the gun hard against its chest. Just maybe the bullet will penetrate its hide, then.” Or just maybe it would grab him first.
Thump. There was a rocking and a creak of floorboards. “I think it’s in,” she said. “Heavy as… as hell.”
Jerry walked around the sofa and stood beside the door, waiting. She stayed where she was and trembled.
Then a great crunching sounded, which she thought might have been the dresser, and thuds from the distance, as though the intruder was throwing the furniture out of the cottage altogether.
Graham stopped screaming… Carlo stopped screaming… More thuds… Silence. Jerry said nothing.
With creaks and a shuddering, the whole building trembled as the visitor walked, probably stepping carefully in case the floor collapsed.
Then the bedroom door was ripped from its hinges and hurled to the floor with a crash, and two eyes glowed in the darkness beyond… much too far apart, much too high in the air The size of it!
She could hear breathing, very deep, very slow… a sort of big-animal snuffling noise… an animal smell— rank, putrid.
Jerry started to whimper
Then it bellowed again, a cataract of noise that filled the cottage and went on and on, full of triumph and gloating and fury. One huge hand gripped the lintel and ripped out that section of the wall, hurling it away and raising the opening to the ceiling; and suddenly she could see it as the light flickered vaguely on its vast bulk… a black muzzle as big as a laundry basket with horns almost to the roof and shoulders that touched both sides of the doorway, an impossible chest, and arms hanging down at its sides, and…